This comment does not really fit here but I don’t know where else to post it. Maybe Paul can find a use.

Evidently Google has digitized the entire Popular Science library. This example from January, 1949 is fascinating. See page151 for a discussion on the new high compression Cadillac engine at 7.5:1 ratio. There are many more auto related articles as well. Great fun.

No it could be me downhill with a nonfunctioning retarder pushed by 50 tonnes of freight but our trucks are limited on the flat nowdays. Racing tractor units are limited at 100mph, driving skill wins races along with setup top speed is not really relevant.
But removing any constraints on a high hp truck it could easily get past 100mph even the Scania I drive can pull 2200 rpm in hill climbing mode through the gears until 10th then the speed limiter kicks in and in top its governed to 1380 rpm@92kmh so just removing the limiter and going up a tyre profile size will give you the speed.

Downhill with 50 tonnes of freight and no retarder…I sure can believe 125 mph is possible !

Nice to meet a Scania driver here, my dad drove several of them during the seventies, eighties and nineties. Both 6 and 8 cylinders, up to 110,000 lbs (50 metric tonnes) GVW. Our legal limit in those days for a rig with at least 6 axles. Now a straight truck with 5 axles will do for that weight, mostly these are on-road/off-road dump trucks.

Driving 125 mph with a heavy diesel truck equals a death wish. As turned out in the 1988 Dakar rally raid. During the late eighties Dutch rally driver Jan de Rooy built several DAF 4×4 rally raid trucks with 2 big diesel engines.

The 1988 DAF X1 and X2 were his last monsters with 1,200 hp each, topping 135 mph. Mind you, in the Sahara Desert…

But truck X2 crashed horribly, the co-driver was killed instantly and the crash scene just looked like a plane crash. Pieces of the truck all over the desert.

In the SF Bay area, I belonged to a model engine builder’s club (BAEM, they might still show at the Good Guy’s car show in the East Bay). One of the older members was having eye problems and told the tale of selling his almost-but-not-quite finished single place sport plane. The buyer came with a flat bed trailer and managed to screw up the loading, so one wheel was off the trailer. No way to get it back on by hand, so it was time to call the pros.

The local specialty towing company sent what they had, similar to this one. IIRC, they had used the same rig when they had to tow an airliner that had a mechanical problem. Methinks the buyer had one hell of a tow bill for the time it took to get the plane in place.

As for the size of this wrecker on this job: Probably the only free rig available. Better to protect the business and send this thing out – and basically break even on operating costs versus charge – than turn a customer away or refer to a competitor.

A 3/4 ton truck with a towing gantry in the back would have been just fine. Especially since it was hoisted from the rear, by far the lighter end.

Towing a half ton with a three quarter ton especially from the back (steaed wheels on the ground) is sketchy at best as even with the stearing locked there is always some play. I would want at least a five ton wrecker so as to be able to have a weight advantage on the towed vehicle.

No, we – my fellow wrecker drivers and I – towed vehicles as big as this and bigger with one-ton Chevrolet hooks.

We had two C30s with dedicated wrecker boxes in back; an F250 3/4 ton with a gantry in the pickup box; and a C30 tippable flatbed with a winch. And a C60 bigger hook; but the owner kept that for himself.

It is ticklish to tow something as heavy as the towing rig. That’s why tow-truck drivers tend to be dogging it as they ease down the road. When you double speed, you increase inertia and stopping distance by a factor of four; so slowing from 65 to 55 is a great safety aid. The orange gumballs are on for a reason…keep back and expect the wrecker to be moving slow.

As for locking up the wheel: We never relied on the column locks. They can break and there’s always slop. We’d tie the wheel with a rope to the door hinge and another to the other-side hinge; to the floor, too, if there were anything to hold it. There would be slop in the steering linkage, too; but you just had to live with it. Or use dollies.

I can see needing the big rig if the pickup had had to be recovered from a ravine or something like that, but don’t see any body damage on this pickup to indicate that. So I think JPT’s right…they used the truck that was available.

Back in the early 1980s I had a crew cab dually silverado with the long bed, red velour interior and even power windows. 454 cid with muncie 4 speed. The tranny was making a bearing noise and I called the dealer (still under warranty) told the service writer that it weighed almost 7, 000 pounds so semd a heavy duty tow truck. Of course he sends a regular tow truck and first he tried to pick it up from the rear, the front wheels were barley touching the ground. He unhooks the rear and goes to the front, I mentioned it has a 454 andhe said no problem. The front wheels of my truck sat on the ground while the front wheels of the tow truck went up into the air. He finally gave up and the next day a heavy duty truck came wnd got it. Chevy put a new tranny in it to save me time instead of repairing my tranny.